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Stiles had to force himself not to speed, eyes constantly skirting down to the speedometer in an attempt to ensure he wasn’t going well over the allowable limit because if he got pulled over right now, he would lose his shit. Literally, he would probably get arrested.
So he had to stay calm and keep himself at a reasonable speed while panicking so badly he worried he would hyperventilate and pass out. But really, it was Derek’s fault!
Stiles had left his shift at work to fourteen missed calls from Derek, along with a couple dozen texts demanding that Stiles call him immediately. And so, he had, and all he’d gotten was a terrified sounding Derek telling him to hurry to the loft now and then he’d hung up.
A million and one thoughts raced through Stiles’ head, each one worse than the last. He didn’t know what to think about what he’d heard, because he couldn’t ever recall hearing Derek scared before.
But he was now. He was scared. And if Derek was scared, that meant Stiles had to adjust his fear factor accordingly, so it was currently at its highest setting and this was not a good thing!
When he finally reached the loft, he almost brained himself falling out of the Jeep, but managed to throw out one hand to regain his balance and slammed the door, racing for the building entrance. He hastened up the stairs as fast as his legs could carry him and threw open the loft door.
“Derek!” he called urgently, hurrying into the loft.
He appeared from the kitchen doorway, face pale and terrified, and motioned urgently for Stiles to shut the front door.
“Close it! Close it now!”
Turning, Stiles hastily slid the door back into place and locked it, rushing forward to meet Derek halfway across the room since the Werewolf had already been on his way to him. He threw his arms around Stiles, hugging him tightly, and buried his face in his hair. Stiles stood motionless for a few seconds before wrapping his arms around him as well.
“Derek, what’s wrong? You’re kind of freakin’ me out, big guy.”
“I didn’t know who else to call,” he insisted, pulling away. “But I also just remembered you’re human and injuries don’t heal quickly for you.”
That couldn’t be good, but he didn’t say anything as Derek took his hand and led him towards the kitchen. Once he stepped inside, Stiles jerked backwards straight into Derek, staring horrified at the small child crouched on the table, fully wolfed out and covered in blood and juices from the two bunnies he was apparently enjoying as a meal at this current moment in time.
“Oh. My. God.” Stiles rounded on Derek and shoved hard at him until they were out of the kitchen. He punched Derek hard in the arm multiple times, but all it really did was hurt him. “Oh my God, Derek! What the fuck is that?!”
“A werecub,” he said miserably.
“No, I got that part, whose is he?! Why is he in your loft?!”
“I don’t know.” Derek ran one hand down his face, still looking lost and terrified. “I was doing my rounds earlier this morning and I heard him howling. I didn’t realize he was a child until I found him and he was just sitting at the base of a tree, dirty and crying and howling. I think he got lost. I couldn’t just leave him there, what if something bigger came along?”
Stiles wished he could be more angry, but it was hard to be mad when Derek had done what anyone else would’ve had they come across the child. And, really, it was good that it was a Werewolf who’d found him, otherwise things would’ve gotten awkward.
“Why did you call me?” Stiles hissed urgently.
“I don’t know the first thing about children,” Derek insisted.
“What the fuck, Derek, neither do I?! Do I look like someone people trust their kids with when they go out for dinner?!” Stiles motioned himself and then cursed, raking both hands in his hair and trying to think. “Okay. Okay, let’s calm down. We can figure this out. Did you try and backtrace his scent?”
Derek gave him an annoyed look which meant he had obviously tried that before bringing the child home.
“Just checking, don’t give me sass, Grumpypants.” Stiles let out a slow breath. “Okay, you said you found him in the woods, right? What area?”
Derek described where he’d been when he’d come across the child and Stiles thought about the nearby Packs. The location bordered Satomi’s territory, but most of her Pack were too old or too young to be having children, and the cub in the kitchen looked to be at least four or five. Born wolf, too, from the looks of it.
“Okay, we’ll have Scott call Satomi and she can reach out to the Packs closer to her territory. The kid’s gotta belong to someone.”
“And what do we do in the meantime?” Derek asked urgently.
“It’s a kid, Derek! Wolf or not, kids are still kids!” Stiles pointed at the ground in front of them. “You stay here. I’ll be back.”
“You can’t leave me here alone with him!” Derek looked like he was going to vomit with fear.
It was actually kind of amusing. He’d faced feral Werewolves, a Kanima, the Alpha Pack, Berserkers, and innumerable other terrifying things in his life and hadn’t batted an eye. But put a kid in his loft and he turned into a terrified wreck.
“I’ll be back. Just—keep feeding him Thumper.”
Derek looked horrified Stiles would say that, but it wasn’t a lie! Stiles had seen the two bunnies the werecub was tearing into, so he wasn’t saying anything callous.
Running out of the building as fast as he could, Stiles jumped back into the Jeep and got the key into the ignition with shaky hands. This was not what he had signed up for today, and he almost wanted to just drive away and not come back. But, Derek would murder him, or at the very least deprive him of sex, and Stiles really liked sex, so he had to go back no matter what.
He made it home in record time and raced into the house. He headed straight for his room, ignoring his dad’s distracted greeting from the living room where he was watching baseball. Stiles started tearing his room apart looking for anything he could that would entertain a child.
He found two Disney movies and a bunch of toy cars in the back of his closet. While not really wanting to risk having anything damaged, Stiles recognized this was an emergency and he pulled out his LEGO Death Star, did a little prayer, and then tore it apart so he could stuff the pieces into a plastic bag. It had taken him almost eight hours to get the Death Star constructed, and now he was going to have to start all over again.
The things he did for love and sex. Only Derek Hale.
Rushing back down the stairs and out the door, he managed to call a farewell to his father this time when the man said goodbye, still not looking away from the screen. He tried not to speed back to Derek’s and called Scott while he drove, putting the phone on speaker and setting it on his lap so he didn’t get caught on his phone while driving.
“Are you calling about the demon baby, too?”
“Oh God, is it a demon baby?!” Stiles demanded, horrified. “I thought it was a Werecub!”
“What? No, it is, but Derek says it’s a demon. I called Satomi but she didn’t answer so I left her a message.”
“Are you coming by to help?” Stiles demanded.
Scott pretended not to hear him, said his mother was calling and then hung up. Stiles should’ve known better than to ask, Scott was kind of a bad friend.
Reaching the loft once more, Stiles ascended the stairs in a calmer fashion this time and entered the loft. It was too quiet, and he worried that a Werecub was about to jump at him from the ceiling and tear his hair out, but he inched further into the loft and shut the door behind him. Once he was in the middle of the living room, he whispered, “Derek?”
There was a scuffle somewhere to his left and then the bathroom door slammed open. Stiles’ scream was high-pitched and somewhat embarrassing as a fully wolfed out child careened towards him and launched into the air.
Stiles dropped everything he was holding and went to protect his face as the Werecub latched himself to his torso, dug tiny claws into Stiles’ clothes to keep himself there, and buried his face into his hoodie.
Derek had raced out of the bathroom after it, soaking wet and looking exhausted, but he paused when he was halfway across the room, he and Stiles both staring down at the Werecub in silence as it snuffled the front of Stiles’ hoodie, almost like it was trying to scent him.
He glanced up at Derek, then back down at the child, carefully lowering his arms from his face and wrapping them hesitantly around the little boy, rubbing his back gently.
“Hey there, buddy,” he said quietly, the Werecub sniffing and rubbing his face harder against his hoodie. “Are you okay? Did mean Derek make you take a bath?”
“He was covered in rabbit guts!” Derek insisted defensively.
Stiles ignored him and shushed the little boy, bouncing him slightly while rubbing his back. The claws digging into him retracted and after a few minutes, he was looking down at a human child instead of a partially wolfed out one.
Derek approached them both, sighing and looking down at the calm child in Stiles’ arms, and he almost looked annoyed, like he’d spent his whole morning trying to calm him down and only Stiles’ presence had finally gotten him to stop wolfing out.
“I don’t have anything that’ll fit him,” Derek insisted. “And we can’t put him back into what he was wearing.”
“Just grab a shirt you can tolerate losing and he can wear that for now. Someone’s missing him, so he won’t be here for long.”
Stiles continued rubbing the little boy’s back while walking to the couch and took a seat, the Werecub shifting in his lap and holding Stiles more tightly.
“You okay, buddy? Rough day? For Derek too, I think. You’ve certainly given him a lot of anxiety.” Stiles laughed at the growl he heard from upstairs, but ignored him. “I’m Stiles. Can you tell me your name?”
There was a muffled answer into his hoodie and he bent down a little.
“What was that?”
The muffled answer came again, but he still didn’t catch it.
“He said Carson,” Derek informed him, coming up behind him with a shirt. Stiles took it from him and patted Carson’s back lightly.
“Hey Carson? You’re gonna catch cold if you stay like that, can you lean back so I can get a shirt on you?”
It took some doing, but he and Derek managed to convince him to sit back enough to get the shirt on him, but then he immediately buried his face back into Stiles’ hoodie. He looked at Derek in confusion but the Werewolf just shrugged helplessly and went to get the bags Stiles had dropped by the door.
He looked at the two Disney movies, then held them up in question. Stiles nudged Carson and lowered his face a little so he could see his.
“Hey buddy, I brought some movies for you. Did you want to watch Toy Story or Wreck-it-Ralph?”
Carson turned his head to the side ever so slightly so he could see the titles, then buried it back into Stiles’ hoodie, clutching at the front of it tightly.
“Let’s go with Toy Story,” Stiles said and Derek nodded, going to stick it in the machine.
He sat down beside Stiles after that and the two of them watched the movie, Carson turning his head after a few minutes so he could see it, and then shifting in Stiles’ lap around the halfway mark, sitting sideways with one hand still clutching Stiles’ hoodie and the other in his mouth, sucking on his thumb.
Stiles and Derek didn’t say anything as they watched the movie, Carson leaning heavily against Stiles’ chest. The movie was almost finished when Stiles realized Carson hadn’t moved in a while and looked down to see he had fallen asleep. His head was pressed against Stiles’ arm, nose almost in his armpit, and he still had his thumb in his mouth.
“Thank God,” Derek said quietly from beside him, rubbing tiredly at his face with both hands. “He wouldn’t stop crying, and my bathroom is a disaster area.” He scowled. “So is my kitchen.”
“He was scared,” Stiles insisted, rubbing his thumb gently against Carson’s arm. “You have a scary looking face.”
Derek turned to glare at him and Stiles grinned, but looked back down at Carson after a few seconds and frowned.
“Do I smell different?”
“What do you mean?” Derek asked.
“Well, he was freaking out until I got here and then when he ran at me, I thought he was going to attack me, but he just clung to me and sniffed me. Even now, his face is buried in my armpit.” Stiles turned to Derek. “Trust me, nobody’s face wants to be in my armpit.”
Derek rolled his eyes, but just shrugged, crossing his arms. “Maybe it’s because you smell human. Everyone has their own unique scent, but you can tell in a second if someone is human or Supernatural because there’s that underlying scent to everyone that matches whatever they are. He probably smelled you were human, and thus less of a danger than me. I’m a Werewolf, and much older than him, and while he probably doesn’t know what blue eyes signify, he likely knew it was different than what he was used to and panicked. You’re safer.”
Stiles thought about what he’d said for a few seconds, then shook his head. “No, it’s totally because he was scared of your scary-looking face.” He grinned at Derek, who just gave him a look before standing and going towards the kitchen.
Stiles heard him moving around and cleaning up, figuring he was trying to get his apartment back into some semblance of order. He couldn’t move without waking Carson, so he grabbed the remote off the couch and restarted Toy Story, watching it a second time while Derek cleaned his kitchen and his bathroom.
He came back out wearing new clothes and shoes and motioned the door.
“I’m gonna run out and grab us all some food. I figure McDonalds chicken nuggets might be safest for him, I really don’t want to be cleaning another rabbit off my kitchen table.”
“Pretty sure you should just throw the table out,” Stiles insisted.
Derek said nothing to that, and Stiles figured it was because there had been much worse on that table before. Including Stiles’ ass. And his cum. And Derek’s cum. Multiple layers of it.
Basically, there was a lot of sex having on that kitchen table, because for some reason Derek cooking was really sexy and Stiles couldn’t help himself whenever he came over and saw him in there. He always turned Derek on to a point where he would bend Stiles over the table and have his way with him.
Stiles tried to reign in the inappropriate thoughts while a four-possibly-five year old was sitting in his lap and nodded to Derek to go. He had managed to survive this long, he was sure he could make it a little while longer.
Derek had been gone for five minutes when Carson woke up and said he needed to pee. Stiles brought him to the bathroom and held him while he did his business on the toilet, because he didn’t want the kid to fall in and wolf out and murder him. He helped him get his hands washed and they went back into the living room where he switched out the movies and sat on the floor with him, dumping the LEGO out for him to play with.
When Derek came back, Carson inched a little closer to Stiles but didn’t say anything or wolf out when he sat beside them and handed out the food. Carson ate his nuggets holding each one with both hands and chewing slowly. He kept looking back and forth between Stiles and Derek as they spoke, mostly about the progress with finding Carson’s parents.
Stiles had tried asking him while Derek was gone about his mom and dad, but all Carson could say was that his mom was a very pretty human lady. Stiles knew a lot of very pretty human ladies, so that didn’t help much.
He felt really bad for the poor woman, though. As a human, she couldn’t track her child the way a Werewolf could, and she was probably beside herself with worry, panicking and scared. If Derek hadn’t found Carson, who knew how long he’d have been out in the woods on his own.
They’d re-watched the two Disney movies once each before Derek checked the time and winced.
“It’s getting late. We should think about getting him to bed.”
“Are we just gonna sleep with him in your bed then?” Stiles asked, staring down at Carson, who was sucking on his thumb again while watching Ralph tell off King Candy on the screen.
“Unless you have a magical child’s bed hidden somewhere on your person, I don’t think we have much of a choice. I don’t think he’ll let you leave, and I would rather you stay, anyway. He seems a lot calmer with you around.”
“He said his mom was human,” Stiles explained. “I’m guessing that’s why I’m more comforting than you are.”
They both turned to the door when there was a loud knock and Carson instantly perked up. Stiles pulled him into his arms as he stood, wanting to keep him close so he could make a break for it if someone dangerous was there, but when Derek pulled open the door, Satomi was on the other side with a woman beside her.
“Good evening, Derek.”
“Ma!” Carson squirmed and elbowed Stiles in the chin before scrambling free and racing across the floor. He didn’t make it far in the oversized shirt, but before he could face-plant, the woman had crossed the room and caught him, wrapping him tightly in her arms and crying while hugging and kissing him.
Stiles felt his heart warm at the sight, Carson having wolfed out again and snuffling against her face, scenting her and growling happily. Derek and Satomi were both speaking in low tones by the door so Stiles moved around the mother and Carson to go join them.
“Thank you,” Satomi said to Stiles when he approached. “We have been searching for him for many hours. It was only recently we returned and heard Scott’s message. I tried calling him back, but he did not answer. We had to follow your scent to your home.” She said to Derek.
“I should’ve thought to give you my number when I changed it,” Derek said, and he left to find some paper so he could jot it down and hand it over to her. She nodded in thanks, and slipped it into her pocket while the woman approached them, Carson in her arms.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice wavering and her eyes still watering. “Thank you so much.”
“No problem. He was great.” Stiles said with a grin. He saw Derek make a face out of his peripheral, but ignored him. Carson had been great. With Stiles, anyway. “Can I ask what happened?”
The woman sniffed but explained to them that she was a distant relative of one of the members of Satomi’s Pack, one of the bitten. She had gotten pregnant during a one-night stand, and when the baby had been born, she knew after only a few days that it was different so she’d gone to her relative to ask for help. When it had been confirmed Carson was a Werewolf, Satomi had offered her a place with their Pack so they could all help her raise it without too much trouble. Carson liked to play hide-and-seek, much to everyone’s chagrin, and he tended to wander off when someone took their eye off him for a second.
He was extremely fast and had been with his mother that morning when he’d decided to run off. She hadn’t been able to keep up and by the time she’d gone back to the Pack to get help finding him, his scent had disappeared and they’d spent the majority of the day looking for him.
Stiles bent down and wagged his finger at Carson, telling him to be a good Werecub and not run off on his human mother because humans weren’t as fast or strong as Werewolves were. Carson just buried his face in his mother’s shirt and Stiles grinned.
They said good night, with the woman thanking them profusely the entire way out, and then shut the door. Derek cocked his head, obviously listening for them to leave the building, and then immediately sagged back against the wall. Stiles grinned and went to lean into him, wrapping his arms around Derek’s neck and kissing him.
“Rough day?” he asked with a smirk.
“Shut up,” Derek grumbled, pressing his lips more insistently against Stiles’. “I’m tired. Let’s go to bed.”
Stiles went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and relieve himself, then went to change into some of his spare clothes he always had around Derek’s apartment while the other used the bathroom. He was already under the covers when Derek got upstairs and the Werewolf slid beneath them and dragged Stiles closer to him, rubbing his stubbled jaw against Stiles’ face.
“You smell like him,” he muttered huffily.
“Are you jealous of a five year old?” Stiles teased.
“Shut up.” Derek rubbed against his cheek for a few seconds longer before settling, arms wrapped tightly around him and exhaling softly. Stiles smiled and kissed his collarbone, settling more comfortably and closing his eyes.
“You were great today, you know,” Derek said after a brief silence.
“I was human,” Stiles reminded him. “It’s the only reason he calmed down.”
“Still. You knew what to do. I just stood there watching him tear apart rabbits.”
Stiles laughed and tilted his head up to kiss the underside of Derek’s chin.
“You did good, Sourwolf. Now shut up and sleep.”
Derek made a sound of agreement deep in his throat and pressed his lips to the crown of Stiles’ head before settling.
Stiles fell asleep thinking about his own mother, and how much he missed her, but he liked to think she would be proud of him and Derek for how they’d handled today.
After all, people wouldn’t trust Stiles with their children growing up, but he’d managed not to kill this one. He supposed Carson was safer with him, though.
Werewolves were a lot more resilient than humans.
END.